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A woman I know, who shall remain nameless, is a passionate advocate for animal rights and she often puts her money where her mouth is, generously donating to several animal welfare groups.

She once told me that, to her horror and chagrin, she had belatedly discovered that one noble-sounding group she’d been supporting for years was, in her words, a “front” for hunters who promoted conservation measures only so they’d have more game to kill.

Which brings me to what ought to be the First Rule of Gift-Giving: make sure you’re on side with the aims and tactics of any group you give money to.

But I don’t think this First Rule is enough, even if you take it beyond simply noting that the group in question has a righteous-sounding name or a platitudinous mission statement. You owe it to yourself and the values you want to promote to reflect on an organization’s effectiveness, as well.

Most charities in Canada espouse high-sounding principles that most Canadians can honestly endorse. Many of these groups really do live up to these ideals, but there are others that, to varying degrees, pay lip service better than they walk the walk.

This section in today’s Vancouver Sun and the accompanying database can be a useful tool — though only one tool — in helping you distinguish the agencies whose approach you value from those you do not.

My colleague Chad Skelton has done a good job not only of compiling financial information on some leading B.C. charities, but also presenting it in context. The data he provides is the starting point, but not the end point, for assessing a charity’s fiscal fitness.

It’s a mug’s game to simplistically look at a set of figures — say the percentage of income organizations spend on fundraising, or on administration — and conclude that one is better than another. It may occasionally be that simple if you compare two organizations that work in very similar ways, but to be fair, you have to consider fundraising or administrative spending ratios in the context of what these groups do.

For example, organizations that raise money through thousands of small donations necessarily spend a far higher proportion of their money on fundraising than those that are supported solely by a few big sugar daddies. Or an organization that organizes volunteer specialists who pay their own way — perhaps medical teams — to work with poor people will spend a high percentage of its income on administration, yet its total budget will be tiny in comparison to the value of work provided.

Similarly, it takes judgment to decide if the money spent on administration is worth it or not. Small charities may be able to run efficiently with all, or mostly, volunteer management, but sizable operations cannot. And while it’s certainly possible for ill-disciplined agencies to fritter away too much money on staff and staff perks, it’s also possible to waste a lot of money by refusing to pay for competent management.

The head of a respected charity once quoted some of his would-be donors as saying point-blank they wouldn’t support his organization if it spent more than two per cent on administration. Personally, I thought setting an arbitrary amount this low was just stupid — and I hope they did, too, when he pointed out that if they donated by credit card, as most donors do, the transaction fee alone would be two per cent or more.

What it boils down to is you have to try to judge the agency’s product — not just how much it spends on what, but how much good it does — and decide if you think this is worth the money it spends.

Skelton quotes Mark Blumberg, a Toronto lawyer and expert on charities, who suggests the best due diligence is to volunteer for a charity to ensure it’s worthy of your support.

This would be good advice, I suppose, if weren’t so impractical for most of us most of the time. It may be possible for some of us to check out charities first-hand some of the time — I’ve personally been privileged, thanks to my job as a journalist, to see a lot of agencies at work in the field — but most of us simply can’t do it most of the time.

Fortunately, charities — some, at least — are getting better at assessing and documenting the results they produce. And I urge potential donors to look for and to study this kind of information.

When it comes to transparency, I think the charity sector still has a long way to go. I’d like to see the formats for its financial reporting, both spending and performance, become standardized so it would be easier to compare agencies that do similar work.

Then I’d like to see citizens take this stuff seriously and ensure all their giving is done with their heads as well as their hearts. We don’t need more animal advocates inadvertently supporting hunters.

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